


Them That Need Saving

by booleanWildcard



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Abusive relationships (Side relationships), Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Animal Death, Anxiety, Dutch/Hosea/Molly are a side relationship dynamic, Gay Cowboys in Space, Hunting, M/M, Pining, Planets, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Space Opera, Space Stations, The space opera au i haven't been able to get out of my head, There Shall Be Pining, Violence, also no posting schedule, arthur morgan has a lot of skills but introspection is absolutely not one of them, but mostly in the rearview mirror as we go whistling by, charles is not impressed, charles really likes to see arthur handling a weapon, death of an animal through hunting, except by arthur, heavy au, invented terminology, massive ships, maybe no one will die, mohs scale of sci fi hardness 1-ish, more tags will be added, neither charles nor arthur currently slotted to die tho, no regrets, not a utopian setting, see endnotes for specific chapter warnings, ships with biomes, some bits of canon, some characters may die, space ponies, space space space space space, that has been this thing's working title for weeks now, the boys enjoy hunting, this future is still shitty and racist and sexist and phobic, violence at the level of the game, we'll see, we're gonna make star trek look like a physics textbook
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booleanWildcard/pseuds/booleanWildcard
Summary: "Charles has been running with the Van Der Linde gang for only a few months when things go badly to shit in Blackwater, far worse than anyone's worst and wildest nightmares."Heavy AU-- space opera
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde, Molly O'Shea/Dutch van der Linde
Comments: 12
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> his is the story that's been chasing me around in my head. I think I mentioned it in the author's notes of last fic I wrote.
> 
> I coded myself a javascript corkboard partially to plan this thing, that's how obsessed I've been. I barely even know javascript. Send help~!
> 
> Anyway, this is much more my wheelhouse: heavy AU, heavy modifications, only a lil' bit of a wave and a glance at canon as I go barreling past. :3
> 
> I have plans for this fic, but i'm writing as I go. It will be multi-chaptered, but I do not know how many. I intend to _start_ by loosely mirroring/adapting some of the major plot events of the story to this setting, which will require and generate change as the story progresses; I also plan to change some key things. What this means is that this is gonna start in some familiar-looking places, but that may very well change as things carry on along, and we might not end with any of that mirroring in tact.
> 
> **to see chapter-specific warnings, please see end-note**
> 
> some standard me-disclaimers:  
> \- I have no posting schedule, I make no promises about a posting schedule. I write for my own edification, as a hobby. What exists is what exists until more exists. I apologize for any frustration, but I have other draws on my time, and unfortunately the thing most likely to get me to stop posting is if this starts to feel like work or if I start to get self-conscious.  
> \- on that note, i do read comments, but I have really bad social anxiety and am absolutely 100% terrified of people. It's this weird ambivalent state of both being unbelievably honored and touched that people read my shit, much less tell me about it, and also paralyzed by that realization. SO I do read your comments, and I adore and am deeply grateful for them, but I'm unlikely to respond. Thank you, in advance, whether you read silently or comment.  
> \- IF you do not like anything I've written, I encourage you, very sincerely, to write something else yourself. More fics = more worlds for us all to access.  
> \- if you do like something I've written, I also encourage you very sincerely to write fic, becuase it is excellent and because there needs to be more Charthur in the world specifically. Please. Feed me, I need more. ;3;  
> \- Things in this fic may be thrown into a blender in novel ways, but ultimately none of its original, and I do not claim it as such. If you like these ideas, please feel free to use them. (I would, in fact, very much like to read a space opera not written by myself)  
> \- pardon the malaphor, but in writing fic, I follow in the footsteps of giants. I write fic because i've read fic for decades and it done good for me, and so I very humbly thank creatives behind the transformative works that precede and surround this. Seriously, Thank You For Sharing.
> 
> \- I reserve the right to change significant aspects of canon, and of characterization where it makes sense for the constraints of this world, in the future, especially regarding sexuality or gender identity. I don't know if any of that will come up, and if it does tags will be added, but I'm saying this all this now so that people can tailor their expectations accordingly.
> 
> \- there is invented language, species, and world-specific terminology in here  
> \- This verse is sexist, racist, homophobic, and most of the other shitty antisocial bullshit that are present in both the game and irl. This is _not_ a utopian future. _However,_ I have some issues with the idea of gritty realism and anti-identity bullshit, so that is not going to reduce possibilities here. I imagine these worlds as being highly variable between all of them, roughly at the same level that the world today is, with as much variation. I will try to warn this as much as I can, and to write this as sensitively as I can. I will _not_ be using slurs, even if the characters in the world probably would. I do not know how much of that will come up in the story, but I do want to warn people it's there. The world will have very significant resource disparity and class stratification, tho, and some of that will likely show up in here.  
> \- **rating may also change in the future**
> 
> \- as such, I make absolutely no promises of quality of any kind. I'm here to have a good time, and if this is Your Thing, I invite you to come along with me, for as long as there's a with to come along.
> 
> I do not currently regularly maintain a presence on any socials, sry; in the future I may set up a google form for prompts or such, tho.  
> anyway, I talk too much, on with the thing:

Charles has been running with the Van Der Linde gang for only a few months when things go _badly_ to shit in Blackwater, far worse than anyone's worst and wildest nightmares.

He doesn't actually _see_ all of what goes down– new to the gang, he has not bothered to ingratiate himself to their leader in the same way that Micah has (and partially _because_ Micah has; Charles hasn't quite made up his mind about Dutch and the rest of them, but Micah he has very little respect for, since the moment of their meeting)– and that and his broadness have him playing the part of edge-guard and muscle. He misses the heart of the action, neither interested in nor inclined to do the acting required of a con man, content to stand on the edges of the situation with a gun and look threatening, relying on the sense of deliberate intimidation he can project to keep brave civilians _away_ (safe as can be, during a robbery.)

He doesn't like killing, and he doesn't like messy.

But messy seems to like the lot of them, becuase things go very wrong, and far faster than anyone can process. There's armed men everywhere, many more than is reasonable for a ferry– law and mercs both, bristling with weaponry– he hears gunfire from the center of the room, where Dutch and Mac and Javier and Jenny and John and Micah have pressed forward– a short staccato rattatat associated with the hard projectiles they're currently packing, and then it's chaos and fire and _so many_ gunshots and _unbelievably long odds_ against their survival: an unwinnable gun battle in a labyrinthine deathtrap. The boat– a scrappy thing of poorly-maintained tinder, meandering slowly down a heavily polluted river on an actual planet– bursts into flames as if it's only been waiting for the opportunity to do so; things get hot and dense and full of choking smoke in minutes. Charles and Davey– also on guard nearby– can barely hear Dutch call the tactical retreat; they surge towards him through the smoke; Davey stumbles with a scream and Charles instantly moves to support him, and Davey's not the only one to take a bullet in those early chaotic moments: Jenny's dress also bears a blooming patch of red on the shoulder; she gasps against John, whose arm is soon painted to match, and Charles can't tell whose blood it is. Shooting blindly into the smoke and the flames and the haze, the group pile into a narrow stairwell, pushing desperately past the smoke collecting there, bubbling upward, driven as much by the press of each others' bodies as by the clawing, barely controlled terror that always accompanies situations like this. There's a locked door at the top of this stairwell; it's a poor choice for retreat, but all other routes of escape are far too well-guarded: someone knew htey were coming, someone _planned_ for this, and intended to trap them in these cramped hallways.

Charles expects to die in that maelstrom– an unsurprising end for an outlaw– and the sharp burst of clear planetary air that hits his lungs as they tear through the doorway at the top of the stairs is a small miracle, if not one much less chaotic. The door had, of course, been locked, as expected, but the desperate force of Dutch and Javier kicking against it in unison was no match for the rusted hinges or the weather-worn wood of its composure; it splinters, releasing the mass of them onto the deck, and they shoot their way past the police and mercs alike lingering on the deck– fewer of them than down below, another small miracle. These men fall quickly: the Van Der Linde gang making an escape is a relentless thing, and soon the group of them is on the shore, running for the zhawal they'd left tethered nearby.

The beasts can sense the anxiety of their humans; Charles doesn't know if they can technically smell the blood as a mammal might, but they certainly know _something_ is very wrong, even before more gunshots ring out in their direction. They're pulling at the ropes that tie them to their posts, tossing their triangular heads, the eight eyes lining the long edges of their faces blown particularly wide as they twist their necks around 180 degrees, trying to see what fresh hell they'll be running from before it reaches them. He murmurs apologies to Taima as he jumps onto her back; as soon as she's loosed from her tether, she's surging forward with the rest of the pack, cloven hooves soft on the earth despite the ferocity of her movements.

She has always been capable of particular elegance under pressure; it's one of the things Charles loves about her.

They make it out of Blackwater township quickly, under a hail of gunshots, but there is no time to feel relief, because they've no sooner breached the edges of the town then they can hear a distinctive rumble behind them: the fast but hardy vehicles favored for harsh planetary terrain, in hot pursuit. Evidently, they are notorious enough to be worth the cost of precious combustable fuel– somehow, Charles feels much less honored by the proof of that metric than one might expect of an outlaw, particularly since the fastest zhawas is no match for most wheeled vehicles of any kind. This kind of chase will be over too quickly, their pursuers closing the precious distance they'd generated in minutes.

Two riders appear on a left ridge, racing towards the fleeing posse– they almost get shot for their trouble, but for the shouted hails and the familiarity of their zhawas' coats: Silver Dollar's shining scales gleam stark and bright in the waning light, and Boadicea's glowing golden and white striping is unmistakeable. Arthur and Hosea, who were not involved in the chaos of the ferry job, have joined the fleeing gang; in his mind, Charles curses them for not staying away, for joining this inevitably fatal mad dash, as if this was the best use of their time.

This is not a realization that appears to be lost on Arthur, though, because he's barely joined the group and their fleeing mounts before Boadicea is peeling off again, veering to the right and dropping away, _towards_ the roar of their pursuers, who are now close enough to be firing– shots that go wide, with little risk of making their mark– _yet–_ but it's only a matter of time.

Arthur knows that, can tell it instantly. Arthur, who is Dutch's most loving and loyal son, his dog, his enforcer, his right hand, tireless and loyal and apparently either fearless or stupid or both. As Taima races past the pair, Charles can see the grim set of his face, the flat expression as the man reaches to the edge of his riding harness to produce his rifle: he's going to buy them some time.

Charles curses colorfully, and– without entirely knowing why, becuase he doesn't really know Arthur and still has his doubts about the gang's worthiness regarding his loyalty– he taps on the spar of Taima's left shoulder-fin, ignoring a sharp spike of pain in his hand and directing her to swing around in that direction, following the mirror of Boadicea's path. Charles is not quite clear on what he's doing, but it feels _urgently_ important to react this way, to be Arthur's unspoken and unrequested backup– as urgently important as the push up the burning stairs was or this terrifying flight is, to answer the automatic willingness to engage in an honorable sacrifice with similar action of his own.

And it _is_ a sacrifice, though not quite the way that had begun to congeal in Charles' wordless fears.

As soon as their pursuers are in sight, Arthur swings around on Boadicea's back, training the long barrels of his gun in their direction: he is a sharpshooter, and an infamous one, who doesn't believe in wasted ammunition. There are five vehicles in immediate pursuit; he takes out the driver of one and nearly takes out a second before any of them can react– but Arthur is not the only sharpshooter present, it being a useful skill out here on the Reach, that ring of terraformed planets and stations and city-ships at the edges of human civilization.

It is _hard_ to kill a zhawas, a species whose native habitat is the uncaring void of deep space and whose native diet is raw radiation; the scales that cover their gleaming hides are impervious to most things, from vacuum to energy blast to solid projectile bullet, and weaponsfire typically only raises their ire. All things, however, have their weaknesses, and the sharpshooter from Blackwater finds Boadicea's: a single bullet, both lucky and well-aimed, pierces the soft black irises of her eyes, that rare spot of unprotected flesh, and she is dead instantly, her legs crumpling beneath her, midstride.

There is no sound except that of her body hitting the ground; lacking vocal cords or a conventional mouth, the zhawas die as they live: silently. It's far more haunting than it should be to Charles, killer of many different kinds of mammals, and in that second he can understand why so many planetside find the creatures terribly eerie and intimidating.

Arthur can't've had time to process what was happening, but his movement is a testament to his reactivity: he's bunching his long legs even before she begins to fall, pulling them loose of all four of her wing-fins that flare upwards in the moment of her death. He jumps free, landing _hard_ but avoiding being pinned beneath her dead weight: a potentially gruesome fate to a body especially susceptible to the higher planetary gravity, even without the vehicles speeding behind them, unlikely to stop for a fallen man.

Charles is reacting nearly as quickly; he steers Taima towards Arthur, already leaning down to offer the man an arm as he surges back to his feet; Arthur takes it automatically, pulling himself onto Taima's long back and twisting around to aim again before he's even properly seated. There's an automatic, graceful fluidity to the way he braces for the gun's sharp recoil while he raises its barrel and releases a long breath, lining up his shot as he prepares his body to receive the shock of its report. A second and a loud blast later, and Boadicea is avenged, the vehicle containing her shooter veering sharply into its neighbor with the loud crunching scream of metal against metal.

Their last pursuer seems to reconsider the wisdom of taking on such a formidable duo newly alone, and falls back, but the respite is surely temporary: the rumbling of their pursuit may be dying away beneath the sound of Taima's hooves, but there _will_ be more. Between the shooting and the fire, what happened in Blackwater will be called a Massacre, especially given the civilian casualties produced by the crossfire. It puts a sour taste in Charles' mouth– this gang was supposed to be different, _has been_ _different_ , and while things do _go bad sometimes,_ something about this whole job seemed foul from the start.

Arthur is lowering his gun, and while previously such a successful series of shots would've produced an exhilarated laugh from the taller man, Charles can instead feel a stiffness to him; a glance over his shoulder reveals Arthur's dour expression. Not surprising, Charles thinks, the image of Taima falling as Boadicea had rising unbidden in his mind. Nobody who spent any time around Arthur could possibly miss how much he loved that mare,

That, and this whole grim business.

Taima doesn't slow, pelting for the place where the gang had left the husk-shuttles; the rest of their band had disappeared into the increasing tree cover while Arthur had bought them time, and would already be taking to the air by now, with any luck.

“What happened?” Arthur's voice is winded, and as unhappy as his expression: Charles can't tell how much of it has a physical origin and how much is emotional.

“Blackwater job didn't go well.” Charles answers, voice as grim.

“No Kidding?” Arthur responds, half deadpan; ahead of them, the metal shell of Charles' husk-shuttle comes into view. Taima slows automatically, aiming herself towards the small craft's front, where the mechanical sound of the lowering gangplank is already audible, it having picked up the familiar biosignatures of its owner and his favorite mount.

“I was guarding the door, didn't see what went down.” he glanced over his shoulder at Arthur again, “But there were a _lot_ of men– lot of law. Pinned us in down below. Ferry went up in flames– whole boat went up in flames.” Charles hesitates, his mind picking out another specific image from the chaos: a dead woman, half her head gone with the force of a bullet, leaking a puddle of blood as Dutch and the rest fled her side. The woman that had been accompanying Dutch a moment before, most likely the hostage with which he'd threatened the ferry inhabitants when he'd attempted to initially take control of the situation. “I think a civilian woman got killed.” Charles says, and the next words stick in his throat, not entirely willing to find their way to voice– becuase Dutch _had_ been different from the other outlaws Charles had known, and Charles desperately wanted to believe such a group with such lofty ideals could actually exist; and becuase Charles knew that Dutch was a father to Arthur, one of two, and he didn't know how Arthur would take such a revelation. “A hostage. I think Dutch killed her.”

Arthur stiffens behind him, but says nothing; the silence stretches as Taima rounds the husk, her hooves producing a sharper sound as they strike the metal of its entrance ramp. She's moving automatically now, stretching out her long neck; the zhawas do not breathe oxygen conventionally, but it's easy to imagine otherwise, the way her sides rise and fall, a mirror of mammalian exhaustion.

The husk is small, this model designed mostly for planetside travel– Charles was born on a planet, and the acquisition of this shuttle was the thing that enabled him to take to the void at all, expanding the territory over which he could roam. As such, it actually has a small reactor– an old-fashioned feature now only common to husks produced in places where zhawas are less common. He hates to use it, because it's old and there's always the risk that it could leak dangerously– but Taima is too exhausted from the flight and her time planetside to contribute the surge of energy required to comfortably power the husk herself, not for a fast escape through planetary atmosphere and as the only zhawas present. It would be different if Boadicea hadn't fallen. Charles takes his familiar seat at the pilot's controls, lips pressed together as he flips some lesser-used switches; the rad-sheild doors slam shut behind Taima, who is settling herself at the back of the husk, and the reactor begins to hum. His zhawas will be glad of the meal, anyway, and hopefully she'll be able to absorb any stray radiation that might otherwise do harm to the husk's human occupants.

The sound of the rad doors startles Arthur, who already seems ill-at-ease in the husk; he's taken the only other seat in the small craft, the copilot's chair, and twists around at the noise, clearly surprised. The husk shudders as it raises into the air, pushing off against the planet's gravity, but to Charles the shuddering is more familiar than alarming: this husk has been with him a decade, and he knows its noises. It does nothing for the tension that Arthur's holding in the long lines of his body, though, the tightness clearly evident in all of his dense whipcord muscle– the word _attractive_ leaps to Charles' mind, unwanted and unbidden, but he lets it be so that it might fade on its own, knowing that to fight such impulses will only make them stronger than allowing them to pass unremarked.

As they clear the atmosphere, the gravity releases its grip on their bodies and the ship; the husk stops its shuddering, and they're held in place by seat harnesses rather than the exertion of an invisible force, the husks too small to generate their own field. Arthur relaxes minutely, answering one of Charles' earlier concerns– Arthur was _voidfils_ , a child of the void, born on either ship or station and raised in an environment with weaker gravity than that present on even the smallest planet, and such an upbringing had an effect on one's body. The same thing that made Arthur's limbs and features longer also made it physically painful to be exposed to planetary gravity for any length of time, made it harder to breathe that air, made it that much harder to move blood and oxygen around bodies that already had trouble with circulation even in lower-gravity settings.

Charles had been born to true gravity, and that thought made the difference between him and the other man seem stark, in a way that was unfamiliar. Usually, it was him that was marked very seriously as _other:_ for his parentage, for his race, for his primary sexual and romantic preference, for so many other things– but planetside, well. The word “voidfils” wasn't a slur– there were plenty of others that were– but those to whom the word gestured were always talked about with pity, as _lacking_ something intrinsic to _the_ human experience. A bullshit thought, but a painfully obvious one, as the voidborn man beside him sat still-uncomfortably in a space designed for a shorter frame than his in mind.

Charles hit a few more buttons, and the controls in front of Arthur retracted back into the control console, out of the sprawling orientation appropriate for a single pilot and into that designed for two. The space was still a little too small, less so; the mechanical noise of their movement drew Arthur's attention away from Taima, still visible through the viewports in the rad doors, and earned Charles a curious blink from the other man– a small movement, but still quite communicative.

But when he spoke, it wasn't to comment on the space or on Charles' suspicions about the death of the hostage, but instead to note “She's real great.” with a nod behind them, tone a little wistful and a little mournful, clearly thinking about Boadicea.

Charles gives Arthur a sympathetic glance, but not a very long one– still too new to Arthur's company to know if he's the kind of man that mistakes sympathy for pity or reacts poorly to either– and then glances behind him to check on Taima too. She's settled down, all six legs curled beneath her, white markings glowing in the low light, black eyes half-obscured as she basks in the heat of the reactor; he can't help his own small smile at her.

“Yeah.” he agrees.

Part of him wants to add, ' Boadicea was too' or something about the next zhawas that Arthur gains as likely to be her equal in quality– which _is_ likely, Arthur has both a good eye and a fondness for the beasts– but both thoughts are inadequate to the weight of the feeling behind them; companionable silence seems more appropriate.

And it is companionable– some of the tension continues to leech from Arthur's long frame, as the digital UI shows no sign of shuttle pursuit manifesting behind them as yet, and the adrenaline of the chase drains away, replaced by exhaustion. It's not _comfortable,_ this lack of tension between them– they are about to flee Elizabeth III's orbit with very little warning, painfully few supplies, and some of their number grievously wounded– but it's about as close to comfortable as they're likely to come, given the situation. Arthur's sprawling in a half-doze, catching sleep where he can find it, as the looming hulk of the camp ship slides into the husks' front viewport.

That, too, is almost comfortable, in a different way that Charles chooses not to deeply examine and allows himself to misfile as an aspect of the strangely familial nature of Dutch's gang.

Charles pilots the husk through the darkness of empty space, beneath the belly of the hulking ten mile monolith that's begun to feel something like home in these past six months. Two husks, larger than his craft, bolt past as he enters the actual belly of the ship, navigating through the labyrinthine reactor core. The passages are wide enough– and bright enough, thanks to the glow cast by the various radiation-loving fungi and plants that grow there– that he can see the two husks coming and quickly veer out of their way; their passage is _fast_ , almost too-fast, startling the herd of loose zhawas that are grazing idly beneath them. Charles can understand the speed, though– not all of their people were in Blackwater to help them with the ferry job, and those unaware of their flight need to be recalled before the entire camp ship leaves.

There, at least, is some proof of sincerity behind Dutch's ideals– they won't _leave_ any of theirs behind, not if they can help it.

_They don't leave people behind._

The tension straining Charles' own shoulders does not begin to relax until the base of his husk touch the soft loamy earth of the camp ship's central biome. The entire ship, he recalls someone telling him, may be miles wide, but the vast majority of it is wild and uninhabited, completely overgrown; the entire gang keep to this central space, where the ship's control console is nestled between two well-tended trees at the edge of a small artificial lake. The ship is large enough– _barely_ – to host naturalized environments and the gravity required to support them, but only just. To Charles, it is both novel and slightly peaceful, but for the occasional buggy manifestation of the localized weather system and the current frenetic packing manifesting around the camp. Lenny has the con, presumably becuase Javier was one of those piloting the husks hurtling towards the planet beneath them; the younger man is starting the long process of turning the hulking ship around; others are packing objects away in the semi-permanent shelters in which they all lived, tying down anything that might be harmed in the occasionally weak gravity variations or shuddering movements associated with the ship's maximum speeds.

Charles hopes Javier comes back fast; they can't afford to linger here. They can't afford to be found, especially not with a ship like this.

Arthur jerks to full wakefulness beside him, blinking owlishly as he unfolds himself from the chair; his expression is grim as he regards the movement in the camp, the little sleep he caught either not long or restful enough, or both.

He nods to Charles as he makes his way out of the husk, hesitating only briefly as his eyes pass over Charles, doing that automatic check Arthur does whenever he's around the people or locations associated with the gang, his family of choice. “your hand.” He says, in response to Charles' raised eyebrows. “You okay?”

Charles glances down, curses; he'd been ignoring the pain and aches he'd felt there, the feeling pushed far to the back of his mind by adrenaline, but now that Arthur's drawn his attention to the injury, he both notices it at all and _feels it_ : a sharp burn covering his hand, angry and starting to blister. He must've touched something on fire in the ferry.

“Must've gotten it in Blackwater.” he mutters, and looks back at Arthur's visible hesitation, the other man's thoughts visible as clearly visible across his expressive face as if they'd been written in words: should he stay and offer to patch Charles up, or should he turn to the camp and assist the their emergency preparation?

“Go, I'll be fine.” Charles answers, even as he experimentally constricts the hand and hisses at the tightness across the blistering, swelling skin. It's a nasty burn, but not one that presents much real risk, beyond an uncomfortable few days of pain and frustrating rest and uselessness.

Arthur hesitates a moment more, and then nods brusquely, allowing his look to transition to one of fiercely proud approval– a wordless _thank you_ for Charles' earlier assistance– and heads down the husk's ramp, allowing himself to be pulled into the camp's chaos, a different kind of gravity that suits him much better.

Charles constricts his hand again, hissing at the burn, using the uninjured one to flick the few switches that will power down the reactor and set the husk to resting; Taima will have to wait where she is, while the excess radiation is processed and either neutralized or eaten, but he doubts she'll have any complaints. That lag is why he hates to use the husk's built in reactor, an inconvenience with occasionally deadly consequences– but if he needs her to flee through the body of the ship, something else will have already gone catastrophically wrong, and he can't feel much guilt when he sees the exhausted state of the other zhawas who'd been involved in the chase, already evacuated from their own husks. They're leaning heavily against one another, heads resting on each other's broad backs, crests and wings folded tight against bodies pressed up against their peers: the picture of an exhausted pack at rest, tired both from the hard running on a planet's surface and from powering the husks through their escape. Taima, at least, would've found the second part of their journey restorative, even if she was the only one.

Charles sighs deeply, allowing himself a moment of relief: they'd made it back to camp, all of them who'd been involved in Blackwater. Partially recirculated or not, this was familiar air he was breathing, familiar weaker gravity pulling at his body, and that itself was a victory, if a small one.

He uses it to steel himself, allowing himself to follow Arthur into the camp proper, to do the grim work of attending to his injuries, checking on how everyone else fared in their escape, and helping wherever else he might be useful.

That was what Charles does- help wherever he can be useful. It's all he ever can do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couple of things to add.  
> SEE BOTTOM FOR SPECIFIC WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER and a note on the side-char relationships that get revealed in this chapter.
> 
> also, i changed how i move between two devices in the writing of this chapter-- which unfortunately had the unintentional effect of turning my fake emdashes ("--") into single hyphens, and then continued to do so through the editing. I am not happy about this. I may edit that out; i am going to look for some way around that. 
> 
> Also major hearts for anyone who's catching the parallels between westerns and space operas. I have been geeking out about that well before I started doing my second play-through of RDR2, and I'm quite certain that some of teh discord servers in which i spend a lot of time are being very patient with my current tendency to geek out about the connections between those genres at a moments notice.  
> >>

There are reasons that Charles prefers to operate alone, and he is reminded of them in the Blackwater Massacre's immediate aftermath.

What bothers him is not, precisely, the stress or the tension that settles over the camp– he is used to both of those things, they are familiar friends to a man who has spent much of his life as an outlaw. It's also not the strange synchronism of events that are moving simultaneously too fast and too slow-– the way their miles-long ship must turn in the vacuum so slowly, its hulking mass ponderous even without the pressures of gravity or atmosphere to generate drag, and its the way their escape involves so much waiting, interspersed with sharp bursts of small activity– the treatment of injuries or packing or other such things– all at odds with the feeling that their flight should be such a more active thing than it actually is. It's not even the deaths– another old friend of all outlaws– or the people who get left behind, despite the best of their intentions, though both of these sit with him as uncomfortably as the small mercies granted to the dying always do.

(Javier had found some success in retrieving those of the gang who'd been lingering in the town, who'd not been involved directly with the ferry job, but Sean and Mac– separated from the posse during the hail of gunfire and flames and chaos– were nowhere to be found, presumably taken into custody during the actual massacre at Blackwater. The pair of them had been left plantside, with no further time to spare for their rescue, and John– whose husk shuttle hadn't even landed before he'd been tasked to return for them– had been chewed out mightily by Dutch for his failure. It was as much an excuse for Dutch to vent his spleen as anything– a punishment John bore without argument– unusual– but Johns' stormy expression made it clear that none of Dutch's vitriolic words could hold a candle to his own shame at his failure, for which he was internally berating himself.

Those who'd managed to escape with the Posse fared only slightly better– many of them were injured, though most with wounds like the shot in John's arm or the burn on Charles' own hand– painful and frustrating, but survivable. Some, though–- Jenny had died before the husk shuttle carrying her had reached home, taken by blood-loss: what few precious moments that might've saved her had been the cost of their successful escape. Davey was slower, and he was _not_ quiet– the wound was grievous, nothing that could be addressed either by their waning supplies or their inexperienced medic, Strauss being primarily a financier, and a healer only incidentally.

The sounds of Davey's pain had been stark against the quiet of the camp's quivering anxiety, and in the end, it had been Arthur to grant him the unspoken mercy that was considered A Good Death for any outlaw. Arthur had entered into the shuttered lean-to wherein Davey was gasping and crying, his expression grim, intending to assess the damage– Arthur's broad hands were not those of a healer's, but they could determine the likelihood of fatality with a mastery earned alongside the scars that marked them, and could (more easily) speed it along. A few moments later and Davey's noises had stopped, sudden in their absence, and the silence of their loss seemed louder and more disruptive than the previous whimpering. Arthur didn't look at anyone when he left the dark space, some few minutes later, stormy as he headed directly for the pack of zhawas, some always kept ready on the edge of the camp. They'd been in roughly the same state since the posse's frenetic escape, and were as grateful for Arthur's efforts in turning them down as the man was for the distraction. <color /#00484f>Arthur's actions spurred something fierce in Charles's chest, large and unfamiliar, and it made him as uneasy as the necessity of such harsh mercy in the first place.)</color>

But the legitimate stress of all of these circumstances aren't what feels so heavy to Charles, what feels like an itchy, constrictive weight on his throat and his soul and his body. _That_ thing comes from the outlaws themselves: dangerous men, the kind more used to _doing_ than to _waiting_. Certain caustic aspects of cisheteromasculininty are endemic here, a poison from which so many drink in a bargain for temporary strength– reactivity, anger, short-tempers, violence, and a fondness for drink are all capricious allies, for folks whose lives are defined by the exercise of violence and theft. Charles has always found it paradoxical (and deeply uncomfortable) how closely people like this hold to such the arbitrary and venomous standards– in all other ways, they ostentatiously flaunt their refusal to be defined by the image provided by society of what their lives should look and be like, but still they keep to these worn and tired stereotypes, still they make the world suffer because that's what they've been told it means to be a man. In the face of so much stress, and specifically the kind of stress against which they– the ones who _do_ things– are powerless and can do nothing but be patient? That anger swirls, a dangerous riptide, forming treacherous eddies in the camp, eager to break itself against any target that happens too close to the danger. They seem to know it, too, unable to resist the urge to poke these collective sore spots, to egg each other into catastrophic explosion, hungry for proxy violence that they'd rather direct towards those who hunt them. They are all so big with it, their presences so much larger than their bodies, so poorly constrained; it takes up all the mental space of the camp and more, makes Charles feel obtrusive and uncomfortable and hyperaware of everything and everyone around him.

Charles is no stranger to that kind of rage, but he hates it, he does not want to vent it, does not think it worthwhile or productive. He also desperately, desperately, wants to retract into solitude, to seek some space away from the camp (something that's even possible, on a generation ship like this!) – but he is still new here, still has to prove his loyalty (and still determining whether or not the camp is worth his own), still bound by the promises he made when he joined and the sense of duty that he's willingly offered to this patchwork of a family. He wants to step away, wants to give people the space they seem to need, to carry himself far from this disastrous equation, but he cannot–-he will not, when he might still be useful– and so he contents himself to watch people and stay out of their way, busying himself with small tasks and keeping to the edges of camp.

Lenny is living particularly dangerously–- one of the youngest outlaws among them, he is clever and fast and unbelievably smart: good at people, but in an academic way. It's not just that he reads a lot of books, devouring them almost as ardently as Hosea and Dutch and Mary Beth, but that he watches people too, and then prods them, as if to see what they might do, to bring them to the most concentrated expressions of what they already are. In the camp's anxious tension, this is an inadvisable hobby– he needles Bill and Micah, clever and sarcastic and wry, letting his sharpness draw blood. Neither man bears this well, of course, and the only thing that keeps Lenny safe is the fact that they're at each other's throats as enthusiastically as they're at his. Charles gives them all a wide berth.

Little Jack clings to Abigail's skirts, aware of the crackling emotional atmosphere in that way of all children who live their lives around dangerous men; Abigail, who would normally receive the substitution of her shadow for her son with an exasperated kind of half-patience, instead draws him close, hugging him often and offering him comfort and taking comfort in his presence in turn. The deaths of any of them remind all of them how fragile life can be, and that is particularly poignant to someone with a child; Charles looks away, uncomfortable, when he sees Abigail hold her son close, smelling his hair in the way that all parents do, a latent mammalian comfort that lingers despite their species' claims of biological superiority. Charles looks away, because to not feels voyeuristic, as if he's seeing something that's not his and not meant for him– a reminder of something he knows is possible and desperately wants, but has never experienced and knows fatalistically that he probably never will.

John avoids his small family, which makes Charles feel sour-– he _tries_ not to judge, but there's a part of him that's jealous. If Charles had what John could have (if he'd only take it), what Abigail seems so willing to offer John after so much he's already done– well, Charles doesn't think he could ever turn that away.

But he doesn't know, because that's not for him– not out here on the Reach, the edge of human space, the fragile place where all of their species' hubris stretches to the very farthest points of their inelegant fingers– where anything's possible if you're gritty and game and brazen enough to try to claim it for yourself, _ostensibly._

Dutch is the worst of them, his tension a brittle and electric thing, crackling with static and potentially explosive. He is their leader, and so some percentage of the camp's current mood is a mirror of his own, moving through the lot of them like a fast infection, like foul water– he is avoided, which seems to suit the broad man fine, brooding heavily in his finery, expression as dark as his brows and his hair. Only Hosea will speak to him, with the familiarity of a lover– a frustrated one, who knows better.

Molly will _not_ speak to Dutch, and not to anyone else– she sits with Hosea, the two of them drawn quietly together, soothed by each other's company and their mutual disappointment and concern for the man they both love so very much.

What Hosea and Dutch share is one of the things that drew Charles to this group– the obvious love and affection between the two outlaws, though he's not sure how many others of the gang are aware that this said affinity is not merely _strictly platonic_. Arthur and Hosea are Dutch's oldest family, they are three of an original four, and so they and Molly are the only ones willing to voice reservations to their beloved patriarch, none of which are received elegantly. Hosea is the only one to offer them gently, and still Dutch crackles at him, snapping, gesturing broadly with that half-sung cadence of an orator. Dutch feels trapped–- he is trapped–- and so he lashes out at Hosea and Molly, cruel and then contrite and then cruel again, a rapid vacillation. Hosea seems practiced at its reception, his expression sad and exhausted and earnest and concerned and tense and achingly sympathetic; Molly draws into herself, younger and less practiced, only just learning how to build up the walls necessary to protect herself from Dutch's venomous temper. To observe this, too, feels voyeuristic, but differently. The love Hosea and Molly have for Dutch is obvious to Charles: a deep and resonant thing, but for all it burns brightly, it stands no chance of warming the vacuous space of Dutch's voracious ambitions. It's love, real love, obviously mutual but ravenous, insatiably consumptive, the kind of relationship that will eat everything you are. He's seen it before– it's the only perverse version of the future that Abigail is forever offering to John, that Charles thinks most likely in reach for himself.

It's good to remember why he keeps his distance.

Arthur keeps away from all of them, ever Dutch's dog: watchful and protective and upset and uneasy, reacting to the mood around camp so deeply that he probably couldn't put a name to it if asked, or to his reaction. His patriarch is angry, and so he is angry, even if he knows the anger is only partially his own. His people, _his pack_ , are in danger, and there's nothing he can do, so he paces the edge of his territory, growling and snapping and brooding up a storm, stewing in a dangerous mixture of pride and his own perception of impotent possibilities. Arthur is as subject to the gravity of society's very worst ideals as the rest of them– though he, at least, tries to mitigate the potential explosiveness of his anger. The long man does miscellaneous tasks to the edge of camp, avoiding people when he's in that state where his shoulders are so stiff that Charles can almost feel the stone-like hardness of the muscle there, self-soothing with small mundane chores or the careful tending of the zhawas. Arthur does not like to feel useless, and so he does the unsung work of caretaking, quotidian tasks the other outlaws dismiss as inglorious and beneath them.

Charles recognizes this tendency in himself, too.

He is looking for such at task with which to busy himself, when he overhears part of a conversation that seems promising. Arthur is walking by Pearson, and the cook– both pompous and gregarious, especially with the other white men of camp– has taken the excuse to talk Arthur's ear off, the frenetic slicing of vegetables providing an unusual marker for his punctuation. "-running low," he's in the middle of saying, following the word with particularly emphatic drop of the blade, "We had to get out of blackwater so fast I didn't have time to resupply, we're gonna starve before we get to– where is it that we're goin', Mr. Morgan?"

Arthur seems dissatisfied to be listening, his stance shifting awkwardly, leaning towards the door as if subject to an unknown gravitational pull, trying to draw himself away from a conversation that he doesn't want to be having. "Valentine station." he answers– grouses, more properly, for all that it's an answer flat in tone. He starts to say something else, but Pearson waves his knife again for emphasis, drawing a slightly alarmed look from Arthur-– it's a cooking knife, not properly a weapon, but the man is familiar enough with violence that any flailing blade isn't something he takes lightly. The flash of metal draws his eyes and generates tension down his spine, a hand twitching towards the gun always present at his belt; he doesn't reach, the automatic survival instinct checked by self-control. It does nothing for his patience, however; Arthur looks aggravated, and more so the more the cook talks.

"I don't have enough for all these mouths I have to feed, Mr. Morgan! And I've _seen_ starvation. I've _seen_ what it does to good men. When I was in the 'fleet–"

Arthur is carefully edging toward the open side of Pearson's chuckwagon lean-to, as if he might sneak away from the fervor of the shorter man's complaining. "Mr. Pearson," he cuts in, voice slightly wry, interrupting a building tirade with an attempt at humor, "I do not need to hear what you got up to in the 'fleet–"

Pearson scowls slightly deeper, a look of disgust crossing his face; Charles had found initially Arthur's joke slightly amusing, but twisted in Pearson's face, where the light reference to 'what men got up to on crowded ships during long deployments' was both so obvious and so reviled–- _that_ stung, a barb neither of them had intended, unaware that there was someone nearby to whom it gestured. "Nothing like that, Mr. Morgan!" Pearson says, disgust as clear in his voice as his expression; Charles, now standing in the doorway, looks away, and so he misses a slight stiffening of Arthur's own shoulders, for all he's the one to have made the joke. "What I was _going_ to say is that I been on a ship that ran out of provisions, I know what that does to men. Good men." His eyes are bitter at the memory, which must've been legitimately traumatic; Charles wonders if it's one of the things Pearson drinks so much to forget, before he remembers not to care. "That ship was smaller than this, but, well, what good is a generation ship whose grounds don't grow any food? These biomes are shit. Don't even have any game, what good are they? I sent Bill and Lenny out, and they came back with nothin' but a couple of scrawny rabbits. Those ain't gonna go far, especially without anything to cook with 'em–"

This is another stab of petty annoyance for Charles, not sure whose ineptitude is more offensive– Lenny or Bill's, becuase of course they weren't going to find anything, loud and inexperienced in any kind of wilderness as both of them are, or Pearson's, who thought it a good idea to send them in the first place.

Arthur is offended on behalf of his home; he's starting to leap to the generation ship's defense– "They're plenty fine to generate the air you breathe–", but Charles decides he's had enough of listening to this, especially since he can help with this situation. He's a patient man, relatively, but that patience has serious limits.

"There's game in those biomes." Charles cuts in quickly; Arthur jumps at his voice, glancing behind himself, having apparently not noticed Charles standing in the doorway for several minutes now. "Plenty of it. And I can find it."

Arthur is in a mood, a dog snapping at the air in generalized annoyance. "Yea, but you can't do anything about it with that hand, so-"

Charles cuts him off, "So you'll have to do the shooting. C'mon, I have a spare bow that's probably sized to you." he finishes smoothly, turning on his heel, toward the zhawas idling at ready on the outskirts of the camp's ramshackle collection of semi-permanent buildings. He can see Taima's scattering of glowing white spots, shadowed against some trees; he isn't actually sure Arthur will follow, but the voidfils disengages from conversation with Pearson, trotting to catch up to Charles a moment later. He seems grateful to have been extricated from socializing he didn't actually want to be doing, but the tone of his voice is still grousing– he clearly doesn't want to be doing this, either, considers it a waste of time.

"I don't know how to hunt," Arthur says, "That's Hosea's thing, not mine. And I don't know how to use a bow- I got a rifle, but even with that–"

Charles' own annoyance is starting to fade slightly with every step towards the edge of camp, but he still bears some of it; he tosses a flat look over his shoulder at Arthur. "Use a gun and you'll scare off anything we might kill." he interrupts, "I'll teach you. You're never too old to learn. " he slows slightly, allowing Arthur's longer strides to close what distance remains between them, and tosses a look at his tall companion that is both amused and appraising. "Probably." he adds, with a minute quirk of his lips and raised eyebrows.

Arthur scowls at him, and reddens slightly; just a little bit of ruddiness against the paleness of his face, another marker of his low-g upbringing. "Shooor," he drawls, that low thrilling dip in his accent pulling the word 'sure' out of shape; that and the looser set of his shoulders tell Charles that taking a break from the camp's unease is going to be good for both of them. "But you're gonna have be the one to explain to Pearson why we're all gonna starve to death and eat each other, or whatever other horror he was about to put on me from his days in the 'fleet".

Charles rewards this gripe with a single huff of a laugh, moving towards Taima's head for a pat as they draw near. When properly loose, the animals are usually belowdecks, in the mostly-radioactive labyrinth of the ship's belly, but there's always a few harnessed on the edges of camp, ready for the need to ride out with only a moment's notice. She's happy to see him, abandoning a bit of earth around which she's been rooting for scraps of interesting minerals to either rearrange or eat, greeting him by butting his shoulder affectionately with her triangular, many-eyed head. Charles rubs the soft tip of her snout fondly– she is his oldest and most trusted companion, with him nearly as long as his husk-shuttle has been–- before climbing easily onto her tall back. He hesitates a moment, before offering Arthur his arm in a move casual enough to be ignored, should the other man want to exercise pride and ride one of the anonymous camp zhawas available for anyone to use. Zhawas generally are big enough animals to bear two riders comfortably, with room to spare, but it's a point of pride for any outlaw to have their own beast, and Charles knows that Arthur feels Boudicea's absence very keenly.

Arthur surprises him a second time by taking the offer, levering himself up onto Taima's back and settling himself comfortably in front of the wing-fins at her hips. Charles clicks his tongue at Taima, tapping her left wing-fin and then cringing to himself– he'd used his burned hand out of habit; nevertheless, she responds easily, trotting happily past the camp's assembled husks at rest, through the narrow passageways and bulkhead pseudo-airlocks that separate the various individual biomes for each other.

—

The ship in which the gang lives-– if it has a name, Charles doesn't know it, that being the kind of information probably best kept in the fewest number of heads, lest anyone be captured and tortured for it–- is a generation ship, and very probably one of the earliest ever built, thousands of years ago when humans had first decided to reach beyond the Earth that had formed them. It is said that the biomes of the generation ships–- particularly the early ones–- were designed in old earth's image, more an archaic idealization of a mythical Eden than an image probable reality, an imagined Arcadia that preceded waves of industrialization that, in turn, left the old planet stripped and barren. Whether or not the Earth had ever actually looked this way, it became a paradigmatic design trope that held static over the following centuries of ship and station building, even influencing the terraforming strategies that made suitable planetoids inhabitable by their species (albeit with more variable success). Huge spaces, as big as they could practically be made, packed with a dizzying array of plants and animals and microorganisms. It wasn't _purely_ an aesthetic, a fantasy of past untamed glory– it was also insurance, because even at the height of old imperial Earth's glory, the <color /#00484f>Earthers</color> knew it wouldn't be sustainable to support an interstellar empire through resupply alone. Everything had to be as independent as possible, capable of sustaining life into an indefinite and uncertain future, and ideally untouchable by the same apathetic solipsism that had reduced the Earth itself from its perceived primordial glory.

Against all odds, that endeavor had been both successful– wildly so– and prophetic: Earth's power had been fleeting, the empire shattered by the ebb and flow of rival politics, a violent self-destructive fight between the forces that could only claim to be "civilized" because they refused to see the damage caused by their scrabbling, greedy ambitions. Imperial Earth hadn't been able to support the manifestation of its projected interstellar empire, but it also hadn't needed to: ships like this had made their support unnecessary.

This was an early one– unbelievably small, compared to generation ships made just a few years beyond its christening– almost more of a prototype. Generation ships were designed to support huge human populations with ease, much larger than the number of their initial inhabitants. Later ship designs had multiple independent, biologically diverse, and climatologically variable biomes, as much a failsafe against any localized failure as an illustration of shipbuilding mastery. Stations– similarly designed, but on a grander scale– could sometimes be as large as planetary continents.

The Van Der Linde gang's camp ship cannot boast such grandeur-– its biomes were technically only semi-independent, and their biological and climatological variability was minor at best– but it doesn't have need for grandeur, becuase centuries after its creation those biomes are still running strong, with negligible human upkeep. Charles was born on a planet with relatively successful terraforming– it's why he knows how to hunt, why he can take care of himself without needing to be tethered to any single group or town or planet or station– and the biomes in the camp ship, for all they are unkempt and overgrown– raw wilderness instead of the intended carefully cultivated fields– are some of the healthiest and most verdant that he has ever seen. The air is richer here than on any station or planet he's ever traveled through, and that itself makes this place feel far more like home than it has any right to, especially so quickly.

In other ways, too, the ship's age is an asset– small and so very old and uncommon, its software tends not to register on most planetary or station surveillance systems, its physical size massive to humans but tiny to the sensors designed to pick up later models many times its size. It's one of the only things making the chance of their current escape remotely possible: they are being pursued, but their pursuers lack technology _old enough_ to see them.

Charles wonders where the gang ever managed to find this ship, how they'd lucked into a treasure so priceless as this– a camp that could travel, a way to move from place to place on the impossibly hostile Reach, a small patch of home that they could carry with them. Dutch Van Der Linde has two shadows: this is the first, the generous one, part of the offer he extends to all those who might join the gang: here he is, a man with a vision, a savior who understands the honor and the freedom of an outlaw's life, arrived with a promise of home and inclusion in a motley family, and here behind him, the ship to prove it. Not quite safety–- outlaws have little use for that–- but solace and stability that they can carry with them as they flee the noose of civilization, with all that wanton destructiveness it hides behind masks of politeness, pretending to be better than the outlaws they revile.

(Arthur is Dutch's other shadow, big and fierce and powerful and violent, with a reputation to mark him as legitimately terrifying. A model of everything possible to _be_ , should one take Dutch's offer– beloved son, powerful, favored and apparently cherished–- and also strong, violent, often the mechanism of the justice Dutch chooses when and how to mete out.)

"You spent a lot of time out here?" The man in question stirs Charles from these thoughts, as Taima ambles peacefully through thick underbrush, towards one of the biomes furthest from the bridge. Really, they could stop anywhere back here, but Taima so rarely gets the opportunity to stretch her legs for casual reasons, and Charles like their surroundings.

"Mm." Charles answers with a tiny nod, have noncommittal, half confirmation. "Healthier biomes than some planets I've been on. Do you?" He leans over Taima's front flank, inspecting the ground for tracks; they'll start the hunt whenever Charles sees anything promising, but he's not rushing.

Arthur's expression, as he answers, is a mixture of pride and slight discomfort. Unlike many voidfils, he actually will go onto planet surfaces by choice, but he can never stay there long–- at best, the higher gravity is physically uncomfortable, and more time caught in its pressures moves things from 'uncomfortable' to 'painful' and eventually to 'dangerous' and 'lethal.' Planets are also said to have the best wild environments, better than even the most modern and richly appointed generation ship–- something more idealized stereotype than truth, in Charles' wide experience. Arthur's pride is greater than his discomfort of that common belief– this is his home, and he loves it, this strange ancient generation ship. "Yeah." he answers, "Been living on this ship most of my life. Nobody comes out this far, s'real nice if you want some solitude. And some of these biomes have old buildings that still have useful shit in'm. " The way he says useful implies that 'useful' is also synonymous for 'interesting'; Charles is amused, that they would both be pulled out into these outskirts, considered so uninteresting by the rest of their companions, for different reasons– Charles for wilds that remind him of old homes (and that allow him to exercise tracking and hunting skills honed nearly as long as he's been walking) and Arthur for the chance to investigate more human landscapes. It's appropriate to what each of them are.

Charles has nothing to say in response, but the silence that sits between them is not uncomfortable.

It's not too long until Charles finds some tracks, and fresh ones– if people had once lived out this far, as Arthur implies, then it's been so long that the wildlife of the biome have mostly lost memory of what that means, and don't remember to avoid either zhawas or the humans they bear for reasons other than novelty. On a generation ship this old, the species are mostly native to old earth, with only so many modifications as was thought required to make them survive the inevitable differences of a lower-G environment; like Arthur, they are long, but unlike Arthur, they are better adapted to the difference, and don't have to worry about ever encountering the negative effects of a planet's atmosphere. Charles has plenty of experience with tracking in a variety of environments; they dismount, and he crouches, inspecting the ground, motioning to Arthur to follow him into the foliage.

It's fairly clear that Arthur has no idea how to do what they're doing, but he watches Charles with interest, blue eyes sharp and assessing. And it's indeed true that it's not too late for him to learn: Charles had more or less intended to use Arthur as an extra set of arms, but he decides to narrate what he's doing in a low voice, taking a chance that Arthur might actually want to know these things himself. He turns out to be a keen student, as curious about the practical aspects of hunting as he was about whether Charles had been casually exploring the areas of their home that held little interest for anyone else.

It was also clear that Arthur had been slightly overstating his inexperience with a bow. Before they drew near the deer that they're tracking, Charles pulls him aside, intending to let him get some experience just drawing the weapon– a skill notorious for being slow to develop even in people who've been practically raised with one in their hands. Arthur already knows the basic motions, how to nock an arrow and draw the string back with care that it won't strike the sensitive flesh of his long inner-arm. He carries and lifts this bow easily, responding to the size–- slightly too large for Charles to use as comfortably as the bow he already has-– as if it had been made to his measurements. It's only his _aim_ that is terrible, and that apparently because the person who'd taught him how to string and draw the thing hadn't had many tips for that crucial aspect to convey.

Charles, on the other hand, does know how to teach that. He adjusts Arthur's grip only slightly, his hands warm and dark against the paleness of Arthur's soft leather gloves– particularly valued items to most voidfils, so sensitive to frostbite as they are. Otherwise, most of what Arthur seems to need is practical tips for how to sight down the line of an arrow, and how to make the small physical adjustments that dictate how far and how hard the arrow will fly when released. Already so practiced with a gun, he picks those skills up with relative ease, once he knows how to translate the ones he already has with firearms into their ancestor.

They're soon after the herd again, tracking quietly through the underbrush– or, relatively quietly, Arthur's stealth tailored to the weaker sensitivities of human ears, rather than those of the deer that they're chasing– but that's something learned more through practice than advice, and what noise they make doesn't strike the beasts as alarming, when they draw patiently near. Wordlessly, Charles nods to a young buck, grazing a slight distance from the herd: he's closest, probably easiest to hit. Arthur nods a confirmation, easing forward and readying his shot. The movements are not so fluid or natural as he is with a gun, but it holds serious potential to be so, with work: Charles watches, half an assessment of Arthur's stance and grip and likelihood of success, and half simple appreciation of the other man's body: those ropey muscles holding steady the kinetic energy that will soon travel through that arrow and into their target.

Arthur takes his time with the aim, careful and precise; the action thereafter happens quickly, as it should. A simple release of tension: he lets go, the whole bow cracks forward, launching all that energy held previously by those strong arms forward, propelling the arrow forward on its on the abrupt release. The bolt's progress through the air is too fast for Charles to track with his eyes, but the buck shrieks in pain, staggering forward: Arthur's aim was decent, and better for his patience with that initial shot, but it wasn't true enough to kill the creature instantly. Their target leaps away into the brush, heavy on his elegant frame, staggering and bleeding badly. He will be easy to track.

The buck doesn't get far, the wound in his shoulder too deep to allow his continued flight. They find him nestled in dense undergrowth, bleating and shuddering, eyes white with panic and pain. Arthur does not need to be instructed to end his suffering– he is not an unkind man, having exercised a similar mercy so shortly before, and it's good to see that this kindness is not limited only to his own species. He steps forward, knife already out, driving its sharp point swiftly into the animal's neck; the buck stills in his grip, dead instantly.

Arthur looks exhilarated, this first hunt with an unfamiliar weapon a successful one. "We have time for a second." Charles offers. He is unsurprised when Arthur easily agrees- there is something game in that man's eyes, either his fondness for these uninhabited spaces, or that primordial joy that follows a relatively clean kill, or both. Charles finds himself happy to indulge any of them.

Too quickly, the hunt is over. They each carry one successful kill over their shoulders, the bodies warm dead-weight as they make their way to Taima's side. She's used to ferrying such a burden, and far more interested in bits of bone and carrion she's finding in the soil: she mostly ignores them while Arthur does the work of attaching the carcasses to the back of her riding harness, Charles's burned hand less useful here. The two carcasses makes the space on Taima's back that much narrower; Arthur must sit just a closer on the ride back, and Charles tries carefully to think of things other than the warm press of Arthur's long body against his back, and the way he'd just just seen that body handling a bow.

Pearson is happy to receive the fruits of their labors. The camp cook instructs Arthur and Charles where to leave their kills, and proceeds to resume talking Arthur's ear off, as if they hadn't just left for several hours on a mission to feed the camp–- Arthur is clearly exasperated, but the earlier tightness is no longer as present in his shoulders or the lines of his face, and he even half-smiles at Pearson's griping. The hunt did good for both of them. Charles lingers in the doorway, watching Pearson and Arthur– well, watching Arthur– for several moments, until Pearson begins instructing Arthur on how to skin and dress carcasses; neither of them notice or comment on his presence in the doorway.

His ability to fade into the background of other people's perceptions is occasionally very useful.

Later, when Arthur tracks him down and tries to return the bow, Charles shakes his head and refuses; Charles hadn't made it with Arthur in mind, but it's better suited to the voidfils' shape, and Arthur will certainly get more use out of it than he will. Arthur seems quite happy with this– Charles isn't sure Arthur knows how much of that pleasure shows on his face, or whether it was the chance to temporarily escape the camp's oppressive atmosphere or the gift itself that shifts the tide of Arthur's own restlessness. Once dismissed from Pearson's presence, Arthur transitions automatically towards providing comfort where he can, instead of the same snapping anger still present in the rest of the men: sometimes through his presence, sometimes through slightly awkward words, but always a clear attempt at support and protection that he offers unquestioningly to every member of the camp left breathing. Here is the other part of Arthur as dog: the loyalty to pack instead of just to leader, the emotional equivalent of the press of another mammalian body against the cold, the kind of protection that is supportive rather than annihilatory.

Perhaps they'll have an opportunity to use that bow again together, and soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: Mercy killing of a side character by a main character, hunting an animal, an animal's death during that hunt, the observation of an abusive relationship 
> 
> Also, I added the Dutch/Hosea and Dutch/Molly tags in this chapter; they are all of them poly. Unfortunately, their relationship is also abusive-- but I just want to be REALLY REALLY clear that it's not the polyam aspect of their relationship that is abusive. If anything, that is the most functional aspect of any of their relationships. The situation is abusive because Dutch, **not** because of their dynamic. I actually imagine this incarnation of Molly and Hosea supporting each other, being the two people on the receiving end of Dutch's temper.  
> I also do not intend for this fic to be Dutch bashing in any way-- there are instances where it's really clear in the canon that Dutch really really does care. This Dutch really really does love the people around him, even while he slides into his worst aspects and also starts to resent them-- just that love itself is not enough to prevent him from being abusive or taking his shit out on other people, and he's not willing or able to do the work that would.  
> Anyway, the point is. D: because i really want them to work, but, barring some a narrative miracle, do not consider it likely that Dutch will change.
> 
> Anyway, on that dour note- thank you for reading.  
> \- BooleanWildcard / * / 42 / Asterisk / 00101010
> 
> (oh i almost forgot- got a pillowfort! it's my only social and i don't know that i'll keep this channel open as still quite afraid of people, but it exists and it has a link to a form where people can make prompts or requests and such!  
> [pillowfort!](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see chapter end for specific warnings

As if there's not already enough cause for frustration eroding the strained tempers throughout the camp, their progress to Valentine Station is further impeded by circumstances beyond their control: A rad storm has blown in from Valentine's direction, requiring a temporary halt to their progress. This is just one more thing on top of so much else that's gone wrong lately, and it feels like the world is shifting, like their luck has died with Jenny and Davey, whose grave markers are painfully bright and fresh in the biome immediately beside the one the camp occupies. Hosea and Lenny, the two smartest of their group, whose wide subjects of interest include things like engineering and math, have their heads bowed over the ship's console, speaking in low voices-- but Arthur was born to these cold climates, and he doesn't need them to confirm what this prickle of static means, the one that makes all the hair on his body stand on end, sharp and uncomfortable. There's a rad storm outside, a phenomenon that Arthur doesn't technically understand-- all he knows is that it involves some combination of factors that make their progress further forward far too dangerous to risk. The hulls of most vessels strong enough to weather the void for any length of time can turn away the worst of it, and all the basic maintenance and life support functions are designed with enough buffers to keep them safe, but anything beyond that risks serious interference with delicate software and hardware systems, or-- worse-- meltdown in the labyrinthine reactor cores.

It is nearly impossible to get a legal generation ship repaired, under the best of circumstances and with near-infinite financial resources-- an illegal, literally-ancient prototype under the care of a gang in perpetual flight from the forces of Law? Any kind of serious systems malfunction would be catastrophic, so much so that Dutch automatically overrides the most reckless of their number, who want to press on despite the storm outside. Thus, the vibrating hum of the camp-ship's progress through the void stills to a restful stop, and they drift, stagnant and silent, waiting out the storm.

But wisdom can only carry them so far these days, and Dutch-- impatient and snappish as any of them, dogged by that same restless anxiety that none of the men among their number know what to do with-- well, Dutch won't risk the ship, but risking people is something he seems to have grown more comfortable with, of late. Arthur grinds his teeth, uncomfortable with this shift in the man who is both his leader and one of his fathers-- but he's also sympathetic: Dutch is not facing any easy decisions, especially not with the law in hot pursuit, after the situation in Blackwater that's gone so disastrously wrong. They've so many mouths to feed, and he can see how much Dutch cares, how resonant the authentic feeling of loss in Dutch's voice is, when he addresses the camp in the wake of Davey and Jenny's passing, how the pain of that loss wars with the awareness of what is certain to all of them, should the Law actually catch up to them. His fear is real, and Arthur knows it-- knows, too, that his and Charles' mutual efforts are only a stopgap, at best, in the face of their waning food stores, even if Charles does decide to teach him how to tell which of the plants growing wild in the biomes around them are good for eating. He and Charles would have to hunt and gather constantly, with a perfect rate of success, and even then they would only be able to meet a fraction of the nutritive needs required by the camp's occupants, one of whom is a growing voidfils boy who desperately needs all the nutrients he can find-- all nutrients Arthur lacked at Jack's age-- to stave off the worst physiological effects of such an upbringing.

This awareness is not comfortable for Arthur, who feels a tightness in his chest, one that expands whenever he thinks about it (something he very much tries not to do)-- it's a tightness that squeezes his lungs, makes his heart race as if he's being chased on the surface of a planet, makes him wonder if he's dying in this most undignified of ways for an outlaw. He doesn't know what to do with this feeling, doesn't know or want to know how to name it, and, in the absence of even a name, has no idea how to handle it-- and if this is how he feels, then what Dutch must be feeling has to be so much worse. Because Arthur is certain that Dutch cares, and Dutch cannot hide away from this the way that Arthur likes to, lost between the pages of his journal with a pencil and that state of perfect wordless processing wherein he transmits what he sees into rough lines sketched with a pencil. Dutch has to think about this all the time, and so Arthur supposes that might necessitate these harsh decisions that Arthur doesn't like-- Arthur's avoidance and distaste is a luxury that he knows very well leaders are not afforded. He'll needle Dutch about his decisions becuase those decisions nothing to take lightly-- these people are family, and if anything in this damned brutal world is sacred it's the lives of their family-- and because in needling Dutch, Arthur believes he can verify that Dutch is making decisions in the light of such potentially high costs-- but in the end, he does trust Dutch, does obey Dutch, becuase Dutch is his father and has never steered them wrong. They've gotten out of worse scrapes, he thinks; all he, Arthur Morgan, has to do is maintain the faith; be strong, as Dutch had asked him to days earlier, make sure that everyone else could be strong too.

Maintain the faith, and verify, even if Dutch mistakes the verification for doubting. Dutch knows about his loyalty, his unwavering presence at the sides of both of his fathers for 20 years; that fact must be as clear and unshakeable to him as Arthur's trust in Dutch ultimately is.

So Arthur, aware that Dutch is planning something that's Probably A Bad Idea, but also probably A Necessary One, allows himself to sit to a far corner of the camp, beside the zhawas, drawing idly and trying to ignore that anxiety that presses wordlessly against his brain. He draws the beasts foraging beside him, the camp, sketches of Jenny and Davey from memory, the comfortingly banal work that continues in a desperate attempt to invoke the spirit of normalcy, Hosea at the center console, Lenny beside him, their serious frowns as they regard the projected screens full of statistics and reports and the haunting depth of the velvety darkness outside, Charles tending the zhawas, Charles teaching him how to hunt, Charles' hands over his own on the bow string-

Arthur is glad Charles joined the gang those few months ago, he thinks, as the stub of his pencil scratches out the shape of Charles' broad hands patiently adjusting the shape of Arthur's own grip on a taut bowstring; Charles's presence is calm and reliable and steadying, much like the zhawas that both of them are drawn to, and Arthur needs for that kind of stability.Charles is like an oasis, a small bit of shelter in a storm-- even somewhat literally, now. Everyone else wears their anxieties on their sleeves, but Charles reacts to the rad storm-- something with which he almost certainly has little direct experience with, planetborn as he is-- as if neither its strange static nor its implications faze him. That's the kind of person the Van Der Linde camp needs-- not people like Micah, who keeps chasing Lenny out of their shared lodgings, sniping at Arthur out of jealousy for having his own semi-permanent lean-to, antagonizing Bill and Javier and anyone else visible nearby, tossing out slurs as if they mean nothing and have no cost. Thank all the stars in the universe that the ladies of the camp, at least, are sensible enough to avoid Micah--

"Arthur!" Arthur looks up from his sketching, closing his book with a snap and getting to his feet: Dutch is calling, and that he should should react obediently is automatic. Arthur isn't happy to see Micah behind him, swaying from foot to foot as if his restlessness is a tangible thing, energy he can't keep suppressed within his own body. Arthur frowns, but otherwise ignores the man, looking at the face of his leader instead, whose expression seems a match for Micah's frenetic movements. "Arthur, son, I've got a job for you-- for us. Hosea tells me that there's a ship ahead of us-- small one, a basic cargo transport, not a generation ship--"

"Barely more than a husk~" Micah says, his voice bright with a dangerous breed of excitement that Arthur can't name and doesn't particularly care to, because even just for hearing it he feels slimy and unclean.

But Dutch is oblivious to the implications of that tone, becuase he nods seriously, and says "Small enough that I don't think it's law. We need supplies, son, so you, me, and Micah are going to fly out there and see if they won't lend us-- or sell us-- some of what we need. Just enough to supplement us on our way to Valentine."

Micah grins, showing teeth. "I'm sure they'll be feeling neighborly-- us small crews have to stay together out here in the dark, watch each other's backs." he says, saying without words that he's perfectly happy to make them feel neighborly if they don't feel naturally so inclined.

It's risky, to take the husks out in a rad storm-- less risky than moving the entire ship, becuase there's a lot less in the way of fiddly mechanics or software or reactors to go wrong-- it'd be a risk that Arthur could almost justify as reasonable, were it not for that steak of bad energy, hunger, bloodlust running strong in Micah's restlessness and voice. Arthur doesn't believe for a moment that Micah's actually interested in the wellbeing of the camp-- in the wellbeing of anyone besides himself-- but he can't think of whatever else might be motivating the smaller man, and that thought is almost as discomfiting actually knowing would be. It's his suspicion of Micah more than anything else that makes him frown slightly at Dutch's idea, looking seriously at their leader. "Dutch, you sure about this?" he says, his drawled accent extending the words, perhaps adding flavors of uncertainty than he really itnends to, this time. "That storm seems real bad, and we don't have all that many husks--"

But Dutch isn't in the mood to be questioned-- has't been in the mood to be questioned for a long time, and has been reacting more poorly of late, less eager to listen to anyone else's counsel but his own and, occasionally, that of people who already agree with him. "Yes, Arthur, I'm sure." he says, sharply, "The husks will be fine, we aren't going to be out long. Don't doubt me, son, I know what I'm doing." he stalks off in the direction of the zhawas, who Charles-- perceptible, clever Charles, who had anticipated Dutch's intentions from the set of their leader's stride-- has already started wrangling.

Dutch accepts the lead-rope of The Count's harness with a nod and a thank you to Charles, who he addresses warmly as son-- Arthur approves heartily of this-- but when Charles says "wait, let me come with you," Dutch turns on him with a foul expression, not willing to tolerate even this minor transgression, which he seems to have decided is also an expression of doubt in his judgment.

"Don't be ridiculous, you're injured." Dutch responds, gesturing to the bandages around Charles' hand. Arthur's gaze snaps to them automatically, drawn magnetically to those hands that he was drawing just moments before. "I need you well, son! This gang needs you well, so rest!" and here was a rare instance where the command to rest and heal was delivered as if in response to an insult.

But Arthur thinks Charles actually has a point-- he's shown himself capable of piloting his husk with the use of only one uninjured hand-- could probably do it entirely without hands, given how long Charles's had the thing, and how long he ran alone, with only himself to watch his own back-- and Arthur really, really doesn't want to ride along with Micah, which is the only other likely outcome, given that he lacks his own husk-- or even, at this moment, his own mount.

"Dutch, he's got a point." Arthur disagrees from behind them, "We won't take'm directly into the ship, he can stay with the Zhawas, but I ain't got a husk of my own, nor am I good at driving them, and we can use the room in yours and Micah's for supplies." This was, after all, a supply run.

Dutch can't argue with that logic, but he rounds on Arthur anyway, sour to have been contradicted three times, and the last successfully. "Fine! Fine," he snaps at Arthur, "Though maybe, son, that's a situation you should seek to remedy, so we don't get caught out this way in the future! I can't always spare the resources to pick you up and ferry you around! And you, son-" he rounds on Charles, "You'll hang back when we get to that ship, like Arthur suggested. Rest that hand-- we need you well, Mr. Smith!" Commands so distributed, he turns sharply and stalks back off to his own husk, the Count trotting eagerly along beside him. Micah follows, leading Baylock to his own small husk and looking very pleased to have seen Arthur be the recipient of Dutch's ire.

But Arthur's been around for a long time, and Dutch has never exactly borne criticism elegantly, so he shrugs at Charles, unconcerned-- if anything worries him, it's Micah, not Dutch. Charles just gives him a lopsided half-smile, leading Taima to his own husk. "I'm just glad I don't have to let you drive this old girl." Charles says to him, patting the metal of the husk's hull as they walk into its belly.

Arthur snorts-- wiggling his long fingers to stand in for a gesture at the entire length of him- "Wouldn't be a very comfortable fit." This earns an amused-- and complete-- smile from the other man, a fact that makes Arthur feel warm and proud-- Charles smiles rarely, which is a damn shame for someone who does so much for the entire game, and always without question. That's what this gang--that's what family's for, after all. It's not all just stealing and money and violence-- or, well, it's not really supposed to be, for all that it's been too much of that lately.

Rad storms are not unlike the harsh gales and storms programmed into the biomes of generation ships and stations-- manifestations of chaos deemed vital to the strange alchemy of supporting life-- and like those storms, they have periods of rest between the waves of destructive exertion. Husks-- especially the kind of husks employed by the gang, powered by the ambient biological processing of the zhawas rather than a proper reactor core-- do better in rad storms than proper ships do, but "better" is a relative term. There is still to be a period of tense waiting, where the three husks hover in the reactor bay, keeping their energy signatures as low as possible, while still ready shoot out into the break in the storm at a moment's notice.

But navigation in the void, for all that Arthur does not (and does not want to) drive a Husk-shuttle of his own, is one of his skills. There's a common superstition, that Voidfils are preternaturally attuned to the mercurial technically-not-weather of deep space; Arthur thinks it a somewhat stupid one-- what people mistake for supernatural affinity is actually just the product of long experience in these harsh climates. There is a trick, when deciding to make the risky decision to venture out in a rad storm, to knowing which breaks in the frenetic energy are only seconds long, and which might last long enough to possibly let you get somewhere. Thus, their small party is arranged with Charles and Arthur at the front, the other two husks slightly behind at either side.

Arthur leans forward in the still-slightly-cramped space of Charles's co-pilot's chair, fingers unconsciously splayed on the console in front of him, while he watches the viewscreen with narrowed eyes, looking for a specific kind of pattern in the data it displays. He can feel Charles' eyes on him, watching him watch the screen; idly, he wonders if Charles was one of those who would entertain that stupid superstition, who thinks him doing some kind of magic now, and he doesn't know if he secretly likes the thought or finds it distasteful. Most of his attention, though, is on the numbers and the image and the screen and the storm, and that everpresent static prickle dancing across his skin. He parses all of them quickly, with that delightful serenity that typically is only available to him when he draws.

And ah, there it is. The numbers on the screen drop precipitously, the occasional strange luminescence that flashes across the viewscreen becoming much more understated and much less frequent, and all in a way that feels less temporary than the last two brief flashes of similar respite moments before. "This one." he says, and Charles is wonderfully reactive, the husk moving forward immediately into the static crackle of an empty void temporarily filled with dangerous and invisible forces. The prickling along his back and skin gets more pronounced, there being much less hull on a husk to insulate them from the capricious energy fields outside the vessel; Charles reacts to the change unconsciously, drawing into himself as if to ward off the uncomfortable sensation.

The silence between them is never strained-- this itself is a rare social trait, yet another thing Arthur appreciates about Charles-- but rarer still, interruptions to that silence do not feel awkward or unwelcome. "You do much work out in the void like this?" Arthur asks his companion, curious, sprawled out leisurely across the copilot's chair now that his part of the navigation work is done.

"Not really," Charles answers; he doesn't look away from the screen, but it's also quite clear that he doesn't find Arthur an unwelcome distraction. Charles doesn't seem to feel the need to fill silence with empty speech, as so many people do, but he isn't unwilling to talk, either. "Never really found much call to."

Arthur nods; planets have more varieties of gravity than merely the the force indicated by that name, and one of them is the tendency for those born on planet to prefer that kind of environment and to linger there. The void isn't lethal to them, the way planetary gravity can very much be for him, but that doesn't make the difference comfortable. A great many people-- even outlaws-- never leave the planets of their birth, or at best kept their void-travel minimal and limited to hops between planets or the occasional station. Most of the Van Der Linde gang is planetborn, only Dutch's emphatic charisma and glorious promises-- and the generation ship, of course-- capable of drawing them away from such familiar territory. Charles doesn't seem like the kind of person who would limit himself such, but then, there's never any shortage of work for men like them, planetside-- one doesn't actually need to take to to the skies, unless one already had a reason.

He wants to say something about this line of thought, ask some question about how Charles ended up tied in with their starcrossed voyage, but the only thing that Arthur can think of is that he's grateful for Charles to have found his way to the void, and that thought just doesn't seem appropriate to the moment, especially when it's rare for those born planetside to share his love for the strange overwhelming beauty of all this emptiness.

Whatever words that his brain is awkwardly putting together are cast aside, though, by Charles stiffening minutely, narrowing his eyes, shifting the viewscreen's focus to zoom in on some areas of the ship that seem, to Arthur, completely innocuous. "Something's not right here." Charles says, voice low, in response to Arthur's tilted head, "That thing's shining way too bright to be reasonable in a rad storm." Arthur, curious, looks back at the view-screen and the endless stream of shifting numbers on the edges of it's HUD. The ship they're approaching isn't moving, but its reactor cores are blazing, that much is true. The gang's three husk shuttles are making no move to be stealthy-- Dutch's husk is projecting a beacon that offers both identification (as cargo haulers received of some unhappy luck: their normal cover around strangers) and a request for resupply assistance. That beacon is going unanswered, but Arthur'd written that off as likely the product of storm interference with the ship's comm systems.

Charles, by rights, is the least experienced here-- but he has also proved himself many times to Arthur, and so Arthur takes his concerns seriously, leaning forward. "You think?" he asks, but now that Charles has introduced the idea into his mind, it worms its way deeper, sending out roots. The three shuttles reach the ship's side, swooping beneath the wide lip of its edge, towards the airlock that most cargo freighters retain for docking shuttles of various kind; they find its wide outer doors already flung wide, airlock protocols engaging without question or a demand for identity verification over the comms. Arthur tenses, leaning back in his chair again, hands twitching automatically towards the weapon at his belt. "Something tells me they didn't leave this door open for us." he says, voice low, and Charles hums his agreement.

There are already several husk shuttles present when they land, unmarked and unguarded, but all of them the larger kind that depend on reactors rather than zhawas. They're not much use in a storm like this, and they're also probably not something that the occupants of a ship like this are likely to keep around-- and certainly not so many of them, given that this class of freighter is little more than those shuttles' oversized cousin, with more cargo space and reactor capacity. Charles makes that connection as quickly as Arthur does, the set of his shoulders tightening slightly as the only evidence of his concern-- Arthur is pleased to note that Dutch's expression also darkens, as he leaves his own husk and takes in the presence of those already there-- Dutch knows what that probably means, too.

Very carefully, their broad leader puts his gun in its holster at his belt, adjusting his clothes to appear every inch the hapless merchant captain of another cargo freighter accidentally run into a bit of unanticipated trouble. "Let's play this carefully," Dutch says firmly, in a tone that brooks no argument. "Charles-- stay here, guard the husks, but stay out of sight-- let us know over the comms if the owners of these vessels show up." He pauses, frowning at the shuttles, "And let us know who they are if you do see them, I don't like that they're unmarked. You two," he nods to Arthur and Micah, "Stay back, we can't afford more trouble and I don't want your disreputable faces convincing this crew that this is a robbery. You're backup, and only backup." his frown lingers on Micah just a second longer than it might ordinarily, something missed by none of the men present, and he asks "Do you understand me?"

"Yes boss." Micah says immediately, the perfect picture of an innocent and loyal soldier-- fooling nobody, Arthur thinks scornfully. For his part, he nods at Dutch-- this is a role he's played many a time, and he can't deny that he's a fearsome looking brute of a man, and that he tends to be received as such.

"Good." Dutch says, grinding out that emphasis, before turning and stalking into the depths of the ship, in the direction of its center, where he knows he'll find the bridge and the crew's living quarters. "Quickly now, we need to be fast about this, I don't want to be trapped away from camp longer than we need to be."

He and Micah wait a moment before following after Dutch, Arthur giving Charles a curt, confident nod. Charles needs no instruction, but Micah- Micah definitely does. "Stick to cover." he tells Micah, not particularly confident in the other man's impulse control or skills.

"Calm down, Morgan, you're not the only man with experience here." Micah responds, sneering at him like there isn't already a litany of past events contradicting the idea that Micah is an experienced and reliable companion and ally, but this isn't the time to pick at each other. Arthur ignores him here, too, and follows Dutch down corridors too cold and too empty to bode well for what they're about to find.

Charles was right-- something is very wrong here, and Arthur doesn't know what it is, but he has that creeping unpleasant feeling recognizable from all those many times before situations Go Dramatically To Shit, usually in ways that involve bullets and chaos and dead people. He hopes he's wrong, that it's just wariness lingering from the tension back on the camp ship-- they're about to find, one way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features an extremely brief description of anxiety and panic attacks, and Arthur refusing to call them by those names
> 
> Thanks very much for reading~
> 
> \- BooleanWildcard / 42 / * / Asterisk / 00101010
> 
> I can be found on [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010), and (for now) prompts can be tossed my way via [this google form](https://forms.gle/47csPgHHMKCUnb1g6), tho i make no promises about filling all them, due to schedule constraints.

**Author's Note:**

> Specific chapter warning: Death of Arthur's mount
> 
> Thank you for reading~  
> \- Boolean Wildcard/ 42 / * / 00101010


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